Victory
by karhall
Summary: In the aftermath, those who remain fall further and further from grace. Alone in the darkness. Bound by thought and memory. Jaune is alone. [A Vol. 3 Fanficiton by myself — Originally on my Tumblr — Arkos Bumblebee] Image: "Jaune Arc" by Lollyist on DeviantArt
His arms were leaden and stiff. They had been, for what seemed like months now. Like chains that had sunk into his wrists and were forcing him to his knees. Dragging him down, down. Deeper. Further down he felt them call him, chiding him to join them in the darkness where everything could be forgotten. The darkness, where the warm embrace of void would free him from his pain. From the dizzying confusion ripping his head in two; the questions he had, the things he still wanted to say. They dragged him down from the moment Qrow placed the circlet in his hands, the moment the old huntsman said those two simple words. They buried into his flesh and pulled him down. And though he fought to stay on his feet, he was not strong enough. He had never been strong enough.

The glistening gold only stared back at him, and it had every day since Qrow had given it to him. Just stared back at him, even when he cleaned it. Silent. He knew every atom of that circlet. They all felt like her lips. Seeing a scratch here or a dent there were the red hair or the bright emerald eyes. He still saw the colors, every time he blinked he remembered. They burned with misery like magma. They hurt him. But he preferred to keep his eyes closed still. And that was what he was doing now; burning himself. He liked burning himself in the darkness. He let his eyelids fall shut and the colors would wash over him, every detail was pristine and every moment was flawless, and it burned him. What had he said to her that day that had made her cry? He drowned himself with the poison of her laughter, how genuine it was and the way it had opened his eyes to how much of a fool he had been. It hurt him now, but that was all he wanted. That was all he knew. He hurt. And he wanted her back.

The alarm clock trumpeted an unfair warning; another night without sleep. The alarm clock declared a sixty-third hour of his day. Fatigue held his legs fast like quicksand. Languor bound his arms to his mattress. He had found the witching hour long ago, and it had cursed him. Forty hours of tears wrapped around and woven between eight hours of denial and fifteen hours of cleaning. Sixty-three hours of loneliness, and yet there was more to come. He levered his eyelids apart with all his remaining strength, Sisyphus fighting fate yet again to pretend like he still wanted to exist this way.

It was dark in his bedroom. He left the blinds down and the lights off, though his eyes had adjusted. He could see the dishes on the floor, the offerings that had been left at the foot of the volcano to appease the angry spirit within, that had been picked at but not finished. The freshest ones had sleeping pills tucked away inside the mashed potatoes and bread, but he wasn't going to fall for that. They underestimated him. But she never had. He turned to the bedside table. With a groan of extreme effort, he reached above his head and nudged the alarm to cut off its incessant cries. He could see her there on the table, gold and shining even in the darkness. Like always; she shone everywhere she was, in everything she did. "I'm still here," he whispered to her, sliding his limp fingers onto her and feeling the coldness of what remained. It was not her skin. It was not her hair. Her lips were on his again, but what his fingers felt was not her. Had his eyes not been so cracked and crusty he would have welled up again, but there was nothing there. At last, he was empty.

"Jaune."

He hadn't seen anything in that corner of the room. That voice caught him by surprise, and against the soreness his body snapped to attention. He peered into the corner, meeting amber eyes that glowed like candles in the darkness. "Blake?" He hadn't realized how horse he had become, his voice cracking like glass as he remembered the name of the girl that sat quietly beside the stack of unfinished, spoiling food.

She was sitting like a lotus, her pale hands resting on her boots like snow on a frozen pond. He could make out her face in the shadows, it was turned down towards the floor though her eyes peered up to him with hard sorrow. Her bow, the one that hid her secret from the rest of the world, was gone. Jaune could see her ears quivering as they sucked in one sound after another. He fought his own lethargy and pushed himself to a seated position, the girl on his floor lowering her gaze from his disrobed body as the blankets fell away. He hadn't dressed himself since he had last bathed some thirty-four hours earlier; he felt as though he was still caked in dirt and didn't want to dirty another pair of clothes with his filth. He rubbed his stinging eyes slowly. "What are you doing?"

"Jaune, can you–"

"You can look." His hips were covered by the blankets, but Blake still stared at the floor. Slowly, the amber candle flames swung up towards him again. They looked tired, sunken and black against her ghostly skin. Her mouth looked sour, pursed and shaking. He rubbed his eye again. "What are you doing?"

She shook her head slowly, unfurling her legs and tucking her knees to her chest. "I don't know." Her voice cracked too, but wetter, like ice.

Jaune drew a deep breath in, grating the insides of his chest and pushing his ribs full to burst. "I meant why are you here."

Blake inhaled too. Slower than him, more of a twitter in the darkness than the long, dragging, scraping breath he had taken. "I don't know," she replied. Quiet, for the amount of air she had collected, like she didn't want to be heard. She shook her head once more, turning her eyes from him and glaring out into the dark room. "I–I don't know."

He scowled at her. "Well neither do I."

His words seemed to singe her ears, as they twitched into hiding flat back amongst her hair, and she ducked her head low to hide behind her knees. "Jaune." The amber candles refused to meet his gaze. Her words were muffled by her legs. "I just needed to see someone."

"And you chose me," he asked through a yawn, "don't you have other friends you could see?" Her ears stayed flat. Jaune blinked slowly. "How long have you been in here?"

"A few minutes," she shrugged, her voice faulting again, "not long."

"Long enough to hear me, though." It wasn't worth hiding, Jaune knew. She had been there long enough to hear him talk to the circlet, she had seen what he had adamantly refused to let Nora and Rin see.

Blake sunk even further behind her knees. "Yeah."

Jaune clicked his tongue. "I suppose–…" He bit back the bitter remark, letting it hold fast in his throat. Instead, he murmured a low question to her. "Why me?" Blake's eyes waivered in the shadows. She disappeared fully into the depths of her knees, obscuring the words she let out of her mouth. He rolled his eyes. "Why me, Blake? I can't help you, or anyone. I'm such a waste of space. Go find Yang or Ruby or Weiss, someone who can actually do something, and leave me alone."

"Jaune." He ground to a halt in the middle of collapsing back onto his bed. She had arisen from her hiding place, the amber candles still shy from his vision. Her chin was shaking, and the dark circles around her eyes shimmered wet in what little light there was. "Don't."

"Don't what?" She shook her head at his question. "Blake, just leave. I don't know what you thought would happen by coming here, but whatever it was, I'm not the person you need right now. Go away."

Jaune swung his legs up onto his bed and collapsed under the weight of his weariness. A beat passed. "–nted to talk." She muttered through lips drawn taught with disappointment. "Talk to you." Jaune didn't reply, he had not expected her to just leave. She had, after all, gone to the trouble of breaking in unnoticed. He could not stop her anyway, he would instead lay in silence until she was done and gone. He stared at the circlet like a statue.

There was a shuffle as Blake moved outside the edges of his vision. Maybe he had been wrong, maybe she would leave. "I wanted to talk–" he resigned himself once again to intentional silence as Blake's voice floated softly through the darkness "–to you, Jaune. I don't really have anywhere else to go. And…" He heard her draw in a quaking breath. "I don't know anyone else who would know what I'm feeling."

Something pulsed in Jaune's throat. Something toxic. "You're feeling?" His silence already abandoned, Jaune shifted slightly beneath the blankets to look again at the faunus girl cowering in the corner. She was on her knees now, her feet tucked beneath her and her hands locked together on her lap. She looked like she was praying, or meditating. She stared hard at the floor, amber candles burning low and weak.

Blake hesitated, perhaps assuming that Jaune would continue his thought. When the silence teetered on the edge of endurance, she spoke again. "It's–it's just that…" She trailed off, the breath wandering lost in the forest of shadows between them. "I messed up. Ruby's still unconscious. Weiss is gone, her dad took her back to Atlas–"

"I know, I've heard Nora and Ren talking."

Blake paused to bite her lip, cooling off the sting of Jaune's interjection. She whimpered, "I don't know what to do any more. Everything's broken, and wrong. It's all wrong. The world's in shambles, and I couldn't do anything about it. And Yang...I–" her head dipped for a moment, air spraying from her tongue in grief "–I won't see her again. I can't." Jaune shifted in his bed, rising from the mattress with measured precision. The manner of his movements disturbed Blake, and she hesitated. But he was silent, so she continued. "It's all my fault she–that she lost. I don't know what to say or do if I ever see her again. I guess...I guess I came to see you because you lost a friend too, and mayb–"

"Lost a friend?" Jaune slid his feet to the floor at his bedside, propping himself up with his hands on his knees. The air around him hummed with something sick, something twisted and raw. His teeth were bared like a cornered hound, flashing danger signs in the darkness. His words circled Blake like hawks. The back of her neck was burning with tension. "Lost a friend?"

His repeated question dripped with venom. "Jaune, what…?" Blake shifted away from him. "I thought you would—"

"Lost a friend?" Louder, and frantic. His eyes were wide and dripping with a fury Blake had never seen before, especially not from Jaune. "No. No!" His index finger fired out an accusatory gesture, violent with tremor, aimed directly between Blake's eyes. "No, Blake, you didn't 'lose' anything! You didn't screw up! You weren't powerless!"

Blake slid further back into the corner as a tidal wave of abject vitriol slammed headlong into her. She said his name, but her words fell on deaf ears. He had turned to face her for the first time, and his eyes were melting a hole through her head with pure anger. He shook his pointing finger at her, "You expected me to have sympathy for you? To cry with you about 'losing a friend'? You didn't 'lose' anyone, Blake! Everything you have is fine, everyone you know is fine! Ruby's fine, Weiss is fine! And Yang?" Jaune slammed his hand onto his mattress so suddenly Blake couldn't stop herself from startling. He pressed, "Yang is right there for you, Blake. She is right there. She put herself on the line for you because you couldn't win on your own and she failed, but she's right there."

Blake's eyes began to water. "Jaune, it's not that simple. Don't you know what happened to–"

"You're right it's not that simple, Blake, but it's not all about you." He stood up from the bed, his limbs powered by the insulted rage boiling through his bloodstream. His hand closed around the circlet, and he raised it from the bedside table. "Ruby is unconscious, but she's alive. Weiss is in Atlas, but she's alive. Yang is hurt, but she's still alive. Sun, Neptune, Velvet, Qrow. People who care about you, people who believe in you and would give themselves to save you. That's why Yang got hurt, not because you messed up. You have no idea what it means to mess up!" He stalked towards her, his heart pounding out of his chest. "And you would dare come to me, say that you lost your friend because you're too scared to talk to her after she risked her life to save yours, because you wouldn't know what to say to her if you ever saw her again? You would dare come to me?"

"Jaune…"

He towered over her, looming like a monster from one of the old stories of darkness and death. Blake's eyes were glued to the floor. Jaune grit his teeth. "You're a coward!" He thrust the circlet into her view and shook it in front of her face. "Pyrrha is dead, Blake! Do you know how much I want to say to her? Can you even imagine what it's like to know that the only person on this stupid planet that ever looked at you twice, that gave you a second chance, that made you believe that one day–some day–you wouldn't ruin everything you ever set out to do, that took their time to get to know you and let you in behind the impassable wall of what everyone made them out to be, that loved you–?"

As those words passed his lips, Jaune's breath left his lungs for a moment and his voice choked away. Blake's eyes were closed and pressed tight like vices as Pyrrha's circlet hung in front of her face. Jaune found his wind once more, with a renewed intensity, "I have spent two days thinking about nothing but what I want to say to her. I've thought of three million words just to tell her 'thank you'. But I will never get to say them, Blake! Never! And you would come to me and say you've lost Yang because you can't just say thank you?" Jaune stood up from her and took a deep breath. "You don't know anything about loss! So go on and run away like the coward you are, and leave me alone!"

As he roared his final accusation, he cocked back his arm and slammed Pyrrha's circlet onto the ground in front of Blake, the golden headpiece ricocheting off the floor and careening into the girl's chest. The room fell silent. Blake was shaking, arms clasped tight around her chest, eyes sealed shut and running with tears. Jaune breathed heavily, his chest throbbing as his ribs swelled and shrunk in an effort to sustain his pounding heartbeat. Then a whisper. "Maybe I am a coward." Blake's eyes opened slowly, tracking up to Jaune's crimson face with thoughtful precision. She sniffled. "But what does that make you? At least a coward was able to leave her bedroom."

Something new latched onto Jaune's arms. The chains. They wrapped higher up his arms, his shoulders, around his throat. They pulled down on him again, and he submit to their binding. Blake was right. He fell to his knees, pitching forward onto his hands, head sagging low to the ground above where Pyrrha's circlet had landed. He saw himself in it, but there was a smudge on the shining surface where he had held it. He had thrown it, thrown her. "I'm sorry." New tears welled from his dry eyes. Two days of nothing but wallowing and self-pity. Two days of ignoring Nora and Ren. That wasn't what she would have wanted. "I'm sorry."

He felt a hand on his back. "Jaune–"

"Jaune? Jaune are you okay?" Blake was cut off by a knock on the door. The hand slid away from his skin. "Jaune? Can you hear me? It's Nora." The door handle jiggled. "Can I come in? I heard shouting."

"Jaune?" Ren too. "Open up, man."

"Ren, it's locked, I can't–"

"Just open it, Nora."

With a crash, the door was blasted open. Light flooded the room for the first time in days. "Oh! Jaune!" Nora's surprise sounded so genuine.

"Hold on Nora." The sound of footsteps as Ren strode across the room and removed Jaune's blanket from his bed. He draped it around the undressed man on the floor and helped his team leader to his knees. "Okay, you can look."

Jaune was in a daze. He turned to the blinding light and saw the feminine silhouette of Nora in the doorway. "Jaune, is everything alright? You were shouting." She crept into the room and swung the door shut behind her, easing the strain on Jaune's eyes. With the dimmed light, Jaune could see that her face was stretched in a massive, worried frown. For him. It didn't suit her. He looked up at Ren, and his normally stoic face was lined with unfamiliar creases that gave him a demeanor of intense sorrow.

They had been out there the whole time, waiting for him. He was their leader, even if they weren't a team any more. The weight of meeting their gaze was too much for Jaune, and he turned away. "I'm–I'm so sorry." His eyes drifted to Pyrrha's circlet. "I'm sorry."

"Let's get you dressed." Ren made a quick gesture to Nora, who nodded and moved to the wardrobe. "Get something on and we'll go have something to drink and eat. Okay?"

Jaune nodded. "I'm sorry." He reached out and picked up the circlet once more, turning it over in his hands. A droplet of water plinked onto it, and Jaune realized he was still crying. He wiped it quickly with his finger. She wouldn't have wanted him like this, she would have wanted him to find what it was he was meant to be. He smirked. Even now, she was still pushing him to be better. Maybe her destiny wasn't what he always thought it would be.

A small ping sounded as Nora placed a stack of folded clothes on the mattress. She reached into her pocket and removed her scroll, sliding it open to read what had appeared on the screen. "It's a message from Professor Qrow; Ruby's doing well, and her father just arrived to take care of her and Yang." She smiled. "I'm so glad they're okay."

Just then, Jaune realized what he needed to do. "Where's my scroll?"

"No, no, Jaune. Dress, eat, sleep. Whatever it is, it can wait until later."

Jaune made to protest, but he held his tongue. Sleep sounded like a welcome idea to him. Ruby would be awake after he rested, it could wait until then. He lifted his arms, feeling them slide free of the chains that held them down.

"Nora," he asked, "can you put her on my table for me?"


End file.
